PJay (Same as before) Subject: Envelopes User's IP Address: 208.155.129.167 June 18, 1998 (3:13 PM PDT) I guess I should have said you bring the vinegar to a boil and then add the jello. Make sure it's white vinegar. Any flavor jello. I remember doing it years ago. After it dries it isn't sticky and glues when you lick it just like regular envelopes. PJay PJay (maidinky@mursuky.campus.mci.net) Subject: Laser Foil User's IP Address: 208.155.134.191 June 19, 1998 (4:20 PM PDT) I got a free sample of laser foil and ran put it on a copy and fed it through a little Pc3re copy machine. Can't remember if thats Canon or Panasonic. I discovered it's the same foil used for shirt decorating and you can get it at craft stores cheaper than thru office supply. It comes in lots of colors. The best brand is by Jones Tones. I'm pretty sure you can get it at Hobby Lobby, maybe Michaels, Rag Shops, MJDesigns, etc. in a package of 8 1/2 X 11 sheets. I had it by the foot at about .35 a foot. PJay Daisy (*) Subject: Cards - Pat User's IP Address: 153.36.8.90 June 19, 1998 (4:33 AM PDT) The most popular make of cards/labels around my area is Avery. Most 1/4 fold card paper will work with the 'card' project in PM, likewise with the 1/2 folds. If you are looking to make a postcard Avery #5389 is listed in PM under the Labels project. It prints 2 4x6 postcards per sheet. Also listed is Avery #5388 index cards which print 3 to a sheet. Most folks just buy card stock which is much cheaper than the pre-made card paper, but without the score lines for folding. The type I have is described as "medium coverweight" Exact Vellum Bristol,67lb. made by Wausau papers. Jill (Mars bound) Subject: Pat User's IP Address: 152.163.204.138 June 19, 1998 (4:43 AM PDT) Good morning Pat. I've found that good old card stock is the easiest most inexpensive way to go for making cards of whatever size. Half fold cards are the most dramatic because they are larger. You can purchase card stock in a rainbow of colors and simply use your black cartridge when learning. If you buy a dramatic color (not too dark though), the effect can be eye catching. Purchase card stock at large stores like Office Depot where prices are much lower than Michael's. Another thing you can do is use coated white paper to print your card. This will allow you to get a high quality resolution. If you are making a half-fold card, simply cut both halves with a Fiskars Rotary Cutter and glue to a brillant color of card stock. Cut the edges of the card stock, also, to give a dynamic effect. Are you using Printmaster for making your card? Create A Card Gold Version 2 is the fastest and easiest to begin with. Cheers. Jill Daisy (*) Subject: Cyber cards User's IP Address: 153.36.8.90 June 19, 1998 (4:48 AM PDT) A new cyber card site I just found http://www.marlo.com/card.htm It's called Awesome Cards. Daisy (*) Subject: Users - violet femme User's IP Address: 153.36.8.100 June 19, 1998 (5:25 AM PDT) It was Glenn whose User files do the same as yours. This is his own remedy: "I got rid of it by cutting and pasting 001 into 000 then deleting it. I used My Computer. I have my projects on floppies so if I [mess] it up I don't care. It doesn't take long to delete the whole program and reinstall it. You get these extra files by signing on to windows. If you make a typo PM makes another user file." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- kathi (klawson@geocities.com) Subject: I've got a lot of questions User's IP Address: 205.217.218.34 June 19, 1998 (5:08 AM PDT) Hi everyone, I have had Printmaster Gold 3.0 for a few months now, but have hardly used it for several reasons. Maybe somebody here knows the answer to some of my questions. I have an extremely messed up computer (I don't want to touch that subject), and I have to reformat at least once a month, and when I put Printmaster in again, of course I lose my extra fonts and things. Well, I got tired of reregistering all the time, so I just do without them. Also, Printmaster always tries to save to my C drive, and I forget to send my stuff to my Syjet, so I always lose all the stuff I did with it. Is there a way to make Printmaster default to something other than my c drive for saving? The other thing is that I have been trying to do three fold brochures, and another project that needs to be divided into 4 sections across and two down, but the margins always make everything off center. Is there a way to get rid of all those margins that Printmaster automatically adds to all the projects, and to divide the entire sheet equally? Oh yeah, and the fonts, how do I get them to stop jumping over to the default font all the time instead of what I'm using??? I really want to try to use this program. I've got a bunch of similar ones, but this is the one I really want to use. I could put up with everything else I have questions about, but I can't do anything I want to do unless I can get rid of those margins and divide the whole sheet equally. Can it be done??? Thanks Mayre (N. of Huron) Subject: Essay on Fathers User's IP Address: 207.210.59.226 June 19, 1998 (7:25 AM PDT) Good morning All! I've been up a while, but kitties are feeling poorly after their booster shots, so need extra lovin'. I couldn't get on last eve. Thought I'd like to fill you in -- unless someone already has. The essay on FATHERS was written by the late ERMA BOMBECK. She was a great favourite in our household and for weeks our inside joke to the 'how come' complaints by the teens in the family was "Oh, do shutteth up!" :-) Mayre Maurice (m@azstarnet) Subject: Greeting cards User's IP Address: 169.197.38.233 June 19, 1998 (11:19 AM PDT) Hi all, point your browser at http://www.regards.com for a novel way to send greeting cards for free. When the first screen comes up, it will be an adverti#$%!t for their "Kiss" type of cards. To get rid of it, just klick on the X in the top right hand corner. This service has the famous "dancing baby" with appropriate music, if you like. Maurice. ' Daisy (*) Subject: viewing files - Kitty User's IP Address: 153.36.8.75 June 19, 1998 (6:27 PM PDT) He should be able to view it in his browser just by double-clicking on it. There are several free graphic viewers/converters available. They may not do all that the ones you have to pay for, but they are OK. One that comes to mind is IrfanView available for download at http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/ When you get to the first page click on USA MIRROR SITE (if you are in the USA, of course). Daisy (*) Subject: Good Graphics Viewer - IrfanView User's IP Address: 153.36.8.117 June 20, 1998 (5:03 AM PDT) Go to http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/ Click on USA Mirror site if you are in USA. What is IrfanView32? IrfanView32 is a very fast FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) 32-Bit graphic viewer for Windoze95 and Windows NT. Supported File Formats: BMP (read/write) - Windows or OS/2 Bitmap DIB (read) - Windows or OS/2 DIB RLE (read) - Windows RLE JPG (read/write) - JPEG Image GIF (read/write) - Compuserve GIF PNG (read/write) - Portable Network Graphic PCX (read/write) - Zsoft Paintbrush TIF (read/write) - Tagged Image File Format TGA (read) - Truevision TARGA RAS (read) - Sun Raster Image ICO (read/write) - Windows Icon PSD (read) - Adobe PhotoShop file AVI (read) - Video for Windows MPEG (read) - MPEG Movie (Active Movie required) MOV (read) - Apple QuickTime Movie (Active Movie required) WAV, MID, RMI (read) - Sound files WMF (read) - Windows Metafile EMF (read) - Enhanced Metafile IFF (read) - Amiga Interchange File Format PBM (read) - Portable Bitmap PGM (read) - Portable Greymap PPM (read) - Portable Pixelmap PCD (read) - Kodak Photo CD Preview, Drag & Drop Support, fast Directory View (fast moving through directory), Print Support, Scan (TWAIN) Support, Slideshow, Batch conversion, change the color depth ... Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware Messages like "I Agree" ... The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIFF support RAY (GB) Subject: Cards User's IP Address: 207.51.228.210 June 20, 1998 (7:24 AM PDT) Do you want something different in internet cards? Go to www.ohmygoodness.com. I guarantee you a laugh. Doreen (Hockeymom4@msn.com) Subject: Tek-gradator User's IP Address: 153.34.230.97 June 20, 1998 (8:24 AM PDT) Hi all have been away from the board for awhile not by choice but because I reformatted my hard drive and am slowly reloading things. Went to the Tek-gradator site to download it and there is a updated version as of 6/14/98 the site is http://village.infoweb.ne.jp/~tek/index1.htm Also for any one intrested I found a great easy to use program at Best Buys called Professor Franklins instant Photo Effects. It does some real neat things with picture, frames, edges artistic, and accents. It's also very user friendly.... Stuart great father'd day card on Michale's web site. I used the wrapper that you and Marty did in a little different way for Fathers Day, on Mothers Day I made the candy bars for all the mom's on my son's hockey team. For fathers day I made beer labels with our team logo and all of the kids hockey numbers on thier respective fathers can.... Happy fathers day to all of the chat room dads and especially Mike Goldberg... Doreen Peter (Viking@Sweden) Subject: Print Screen > Don User's IP Address: 130.244.97.119 June 20, 1998 (8:31 AM PDT) Hi Don! Just a thought: have you tried Ctrl + P? This gives you an immediate print-out of the active document, whereas Print Screen prints out the whole screen with all "garbage" around the document, which you may or may not want to have. Also, with Ctrl+P, you don´t have to go through the Copy and Paste routine. :-) Peter Peter (Viking@Sweden) Subject: Free e-mail User's IP Address: 130.244.97.119 June 20, 1998 (9:03 AM PDT) Hi all! I read some postings earlier discussing the quality of different free e-mail services. In case anyone is interested, I read a test recently of such services. No. 1 came out as being Lycos (www.lycosemail.com), for having a good and to-the-point design, easy to use, no adverti#$%!t that bothered much and few questions during registration. No.2 was Geocities (geocities.iname.com), No.3 Starmail (www.starmail.com), No. 4 Alta Vista (www.altavista.digital.com), all these three with "the same rating". Hotmail didn´t come until as No. 7 with comments as having a "messy" design, "very disturbing" adverti#$%!ts and no support for international characters in the address book. :-) Peter Peter (Viking@Sweden) Subject: Free e-mail > Frank User's IP Address: 130.244.97.77 June 20, 1998 (12:57 PM PDT) Hi Frank! No friend, sorry, Juno wasn´t listed in this survey. The other ones except those that I mentioned were: Eudoramail, MailCity, Kurir, MailExcite, Netaddress, Yahoo, Bigfoot and WWDG Free email. There sure seem to be many around. This I found BTW in a swedish magazine. :-) Peter nameless (tom_boy@pacbell.net ) Subject: dots on envelopes User's IP Address: 207.214.148.216 June 20, 1998 (2:51 PM PDT) Chuck Williamson (dancer1@c-zone.net) if you are getting unwanted dots when printing on an envelope, try the following. after selecting Print, remove the check mark from Fast Bitmap Printing in the print dialog box. To do this, just click on the checkmark and it should go to Smoothing. Try printing the envelope. White Kitty (white-kitty@bigfoot.com) Subject: 2 Computers to same ISP at same time User's IP Address: 209.214.32.79 June 22, 1998 (8:17 AM PDT) To whomever was wanting to connect two computers to the same phone line using the same ISP, yes, this can be done, but the only way to do this is by installing a networking card into each computer. The main computer will be the primary and the other computer would have to be set up as a secondary, but then both computers could share the same phone line using the same ISP and both computers could be accessing different websites when set up like this. You need to know a lot about setting up LAN, Networking or Novell cards to make this work. But my brother-in-law has 3 computers set up in his apartment via 3 networking cards and he, his wife and son can all be on the interenet at the same time and be at 3 different locations on the internet. I'm not familiar with networking cards myself, but I know it can be done, because I've seen it done. But you'll need an experienced tech to help you set this up. Plus the cost may be too much for this (my bro-in-law worked for a computer firm and got some of their old outdated hardware (networking) cards for free. Never my luck run into those deals. But that's how you'd connect more than one computer to the same phone line. ~~~ White Kitty ~~~ nameless (tom_boy@pacbell.net) Subject: accessing art gallery User's IP Address: 207.214.148.196 June 22, 1998 (6:14 PM PDT) Phil (ppmakj@flash.net)try the following. if you have win95, click on Start|Programs|Windows Explorer. Inside WinEx., on the left side of the window, double click on the PMW folder to open it. Under PMW on the left side, double click on the folder that starts with the word User followed by at least 2 zeros and another numeral-(probably another zero or a one). Click on Tools (menu bar option), select Find|Files or Folders. In the named field, type: userart.* and select Find Now or press the enter key on the keyboard. This should bring up 10 userart files. Delete all 10 files. Restart PrintMaster. If you still cannot access the art gallery or add pics, you need to update the video display drivers on your computer. The two most common "fixes" for this problem. Afriend (Afriend@printmaster.com) Subject: Personalize your Stuff in PrintMaster User's IP Address: 209.204.137.28 June 22, 1998 (8:25 PM PDT) If you want "Your Art" and "Your Projects" to be personalized (i.e. Joe's Art & Joe's Projects). Then you can go to the User001 Directory and find userart.ini in the Art Directory and userproj.ini in the Projects Directory. Edit these two files and change the lines "Friendly Name=Your Own" to "Friendly Name=Joe's Art , and Friendly Name=Joe's Projects". Of couerse Joe is just an example :) Try it out, it helps make PrintMaster a little more warm and fuzzy. A Friend Stanee Rae Murray (stanee-rae@worldnet.att.net) Subject: Robin > award signatures User's IP Address: 12.68.168.177 June 24, 1998 (10:41 AM PDT) I made up a nice certificate my photo association gives to guest speakers, both at our chapter and at the state convention. I had the appropriate officer write his signature NEATLY a couple times on plain white paper. I scanned it and saved in .bmp format. I put it near the bottom of the certificate, and re-sized it a little. I changed the attributes so it would be dark blue instead of black, so as to look like real ink. Then I put a straight line below it. Just make sure that with your layers, the signature graphic is on a lower layer than the line, or else only the ends of the line will show! Kitty (basyefelton@juno.com) Subject: email attachments of course User's IP Address: 206.162.5.128 June 18, 1998 (11:50 AM PDT) Hi all, I hope someone can help me. This email will let me recieve attachments, My brother sent me photos and several here sent me graphics. However, when I try to send a Bitmap file I get an error message. I think it means that It is taking so long to up load that netscape thinks I am not using the connection and disconnects me from that SERVER. I tried to send a small Html code file that I had downloaded and that loaded fine. I tried changing the bmp file to a jpeg and it still won't load. I am at a loss here and could use some input from the all knowing ones. PLEASE? Frank (u.n.w.) Subject: e-mail, Rob shutdown, Kitty User's IP Address: 208.131.249.71 June 18, 1998 (1:04 PM PDT) Rob, I tried to send you an e-mail today answering your ? about text boxes. Got a message back from my server saying they tried for 4 hours, and couldn't get thru. They will keep trying until 6-23. I might as well post it here, you'll probably see it quicker! (BG) If you are looking for the "stretch", "shape", and "alignment", they are in the tool bar at the top of the screen. Stretch is the "T" with the 4 arrows pointing N,S,E, & W. Shapes is the "T" shown in perspective, and the 3 button with the horizontal lines are alignment, i.e. "left" "center", and "right". Hope this is what you were looking for. Kitty, I would lay the shutdowns at the feet of your server, not Netscape, unless you have a bad modem. Happened to me after I got this new computer, I blamed it on Netscape, until they convinced me it was my modem. Company I bought the computer from replaced the modem, free, haven't had any trouble since. Later, Frank Sandi (henningsen@stans.com) Subject: IE and / or Outlook 98 User's IP Address: 209.42.7.106 June 18, 1998 (2:16 PM PDT) Those of you using the above may want to check out important information at http://www.lrbcg.com/tripper/web_woman/........... go to the Virus/hoaxes page. Some rather interesting information. Sandi PJay (maidinky@mursuky.campus.mci.net) Subject: Envelope glue and kitties User's IP Address: 208.155.129.167 June 18, 1998 (3:00 PM PDT) Marla, you can make glue from flavored jello and either 1/2 C. or 1 c. white vinegar. Paint it on the flap. I don't remember if you can store it in the 'fridge or since it's pretty cheap to make, throw it out. Loved the kitty faces. Do you know one for a "glitter cat"? I noticed glitter in the bathroom floor this morning that wasn't there when I went to bed. I discovered one of my cats knocked a container of glitter off a table and the lid came off. Then later (or maybe right then) he layed in it. (^*.*^)~ PJay Allen (at home) Subject: Canon BJC-7000 User's IP Address: 209.149.100.34 June 16, 1998 (2:51 AM PDT) Teddybear. Thanks. My Printer is working fine now. I took it to an Authorized Service Facilities for Bubble Jet Printers in Huntsville, AL I live in Rainbow City Near Gadsden, AL (which is 80 miles from where I live)and they found out that the new black that I had just bought was bad not empty but bad. That was the reason I was having 5 beeps. They said that Canon was stopping paying for them working on the printer that are still in warrenty after July 9, 1998 because of problems with the ink. He said that there were lots of people that were having that problem with Canon printers. They are not stopping working on the Canon but if it is bad ink they want pay for them working on the printers. Thanks Allen PMW Daisy (*) Subject: Importing MSWorks addresses - Nita User's IP Address: 153.36.8.34 June 12, 1998 (5:29 AM PDT) It IS possible to import MS Works addresses into PrintMaster. PM uses this first record of a data base to set up the field names. In MSWorks you must make your field names the first record of the address database by clicking on your first record, then clicking "Record....Insert new record". Type your field headings into the appropriate fields in this record. . Second, go to File.. SAVE AS ... save your MSWorks data base as "text and tabs" using the drop down list at the bottom of the Save window. You might want to give it a new name to make sure you import the right one. When it asks if you want to save without formatting click "yes". Exit MSWorks. Now in PrintMaster click on Tools, Import Address Book. Browse to where the "text and tabs" database was saved. (Usually in ProgramFiles/MSWorks/documents). Click on the name of the database you just saved as 'text and tabs'. It will ask you for a name for it then will tell you how many addresses it is importing, and then say it is finished. Now you can view it by clicking on Tools, Address Book. Click File...Open...and choose the name from the list. Stephanie (KSBK6364@aol.com) Subject: color printing User's IP Address: 152.163.205.197 June 12, 1998 (8:13 AM PDT) I hope someone can give me some suggestions as to how to fix a printmaster printing problem I am encountering this morning....I am trying to print a half fold card.....the problem is it will not print in color on the outside, but it will print in color on the inside....I have tried to print it both ways selecting print both outside & inside together, and then trying to select print outside only and inside only one at a time......all with no luck.....I thought it may be the picture I have selected for the outside so I tried to print the same picture I have on the inside (which prints in color) and puting it on the outside ......and it only printed in grey scale..........any and all suggestions are very greatly appreciated..... Steph ron werden (r.e.werden@sympatico.ca) Subject: mailing projects User's IP Address: 206.172.220.232 June 12, 1998 (10:20 AM PDT) i recently purchased printmaster gold and after making some projects i emailed them to different friends via the net. the people received the files but couldn't open them for viewing. could anyone tell me how to open the files for viewing. thank you. rc werden Eleanor (esuzart@aol.com) Subject: Ron -- viewing PM cards User's IP Address: 152.163.205.89 June 12, 1998 (11:17 AM PDT) Hi Ron, Welcome to the Live Chat. In order to send completed PM projects to others by e-mail, they must also have Printmaster and then they can be saved to and opened in PM. Otherwise, you would have to copy them to a graphics program, such as Paint, and change the file format to one usually used for net interchange, such as jpg or tif. As others read your post, they may have additional information for you, so watch the later messages, too. Eleanor Stuart Elflett (stuart_elflett@partsovernight.com.au) Subject: RE:> Christine -> Weddings and Clutter... User's IP Address: 203.20.92.6 June 27, 1998 (11:10 PM PDT) If we didn't clutter up the chat room, there wouldn't be one... after all, it's all clutter really!!! Having designed both my own wedding invitations and prayer book, I can probably help a little... although at the time I used Publisher, not PM... I'm currently designing a multi page booklet in PM, and I've found that to design multiple pages it's best to make a series of half-fold cards... I'm working on A5 pages, which is an A4 folded in half, and other than it being a little tricky to keep track of which sheets make which page, it's pretty easy... for a start, work out how big you'd ideally like the programme... work in multiples of four, counting the inside and outside covers too... and mock up a booklet with that many pages... if it's folded A4, use A4 paper... number the pages by hand so you can work out which pages fall on each sheet... allow PLENTY of space so you can work in a largeish font and also leave plenty of white space... you want to make it easy for the older members of the congregation to read without glasses (they may not like to wear them in a public situation), easy for the kids who may still be learning to read to follow, and easy to read with tears in your eyes for those who choose to weep at weddings... don't choose too fancy a font for the same reasons... There, that's enough clutter for now... let me know if you'd like more clutter later, or advice, of course... (It'll be interesting to see whether this moves into the new chat, and whether it follows as a wedding or clutter topic!!) :-) Cheers, Stuart Peter (Viking@Sweden) Subject: Sites User's IP Address: 130.244.233.167 June 28, 1998 (12:16 PM PDT) Hi all! Thank you Helga, Maurice and others for the computer troubleshooting site (great place!) and the two grreting card sites, also very good ones. Me, I have found some clip art sites and links: www.nzwwa.com/mirror/clipart (ClipArt Universe with free, not copyrighted clipart including a link to Flags of the World with lots of flag info from practically all countries)and geocities.com/~bizart/index.html (Free Business ClipArt & Photos) including also flags from Provinces of Canada as well as States of the Union. Peter :-) Maurice (m@azstarnet) Subject: Cutting transparent holes out of pictures User's IP Address: 169.197.38.98 June 30, 1998 (4:42 PM PDT) Hi all, we have had many request and very few satisfactory answers how to make more fun pictures like the ones found in PM4. I worked it out and here are my results.--- How do I make fun pictures with a transparent hole cut-out? The only satisfactory program I have found so far is Adobe PhotoShop 4.0. Mindscape seems to think so too, because all the PM fun pictures carry the PSD extension, and PhotoShop 4.0 is the only one that works in PM. PhotoShop 3.0, although it also saves files with a PSD extension, doesn't work in PM 4.0. As an example we are going to use the Knight in Armor, OA1XX242.JPG. Put the words "knight in armor" in the search window and select the top picture. Check to see if it is the correct one by clicking on FILE and EXPORT. It will reveal the file name. Export it to C:\TEMP. Close PM. Open PS (PhotoShop) click on FILE and OPEN. Browse for C:\TEMP and highlight the OA1XX242.JPG file. Click on OPEN. Picture should appear in the page. Click in the left tool menu on the Rectangular mask (top left one) and drag the mask around the entire image. Click on EDIT and CUT. The image should disappear and leave a blank page. The entire image is now on the clipboard. Click on FILE and NEW. We are now going to create a transparent background. In the menu select 400 by 600 pixels, 72 pixels/inch. RGB color, and TRANSPARENT . Click on OK. A lightly checkered background appears over the entire page. The "checkered" stands for "transparent." (how else are you going to show "transparent?") Click on EDIT and PASTE. Your picture of the knight is now placed on top of a transparent layer. Click on the magnifying glass icon, at the bottom of the tool menu. Click the magnifying cursor a couple of time on the head of the knight, till the head only fills the page. Click on the Lasso Mask, just below the Rectangular mask you used above. Drag the Lasso Mask all around the periphery of the head. A dotted line should appear around the head. Click on EDIT and CUT. This should leave a hole where the head was. The transparent (checkered) layer should show through the hole. If you make a mistake at this step, just click on EDIT and UNDO LASSO and start over. Click on FILE and SAVE AS. Save as KNIGHT.PSD to C:\TEMP. Click on top right X to close PS. Open PM and BRAND NEW - POSTER. Click on the picture icon. FILE and OPEN FROM DISK. Find the scanned photo of the person you want to be a knight. Bring in onto the page. Click on the picture icon again. Find C:\TEMP and KNIGHT.PSD. Bring it onto the page, on top of the photo. Click on VIEW and ZOOM TO AREA. Adjust size of photo to fit exactly in the hole on the knight image. Print. P.S. PhotoShop 4.0 imports only bitmap images (PSD, TIF, PCX, BMP, GIF, JPG and a few others. It will NOT work with vector images such a CGM, WMF, CDR and some versions of WPG. Convert those images first to any bitmap format before using them in PhotoShop 4.0. Use HiJaak or any other suitable conversion program. Maurice. Sally (442Olds) Subject: New Live Chat User's IP Address: 209.214.75.8 July 06, 1998 (5:19 PM PDT) Okay gang teddybear has set up a great new chatroom..it is live and those of you who have been to Frank's bulliten board you can use the same name and password. She just got it going and we tested it and it looks great. If you are interested go to http://www.delphi.com/dirapp/chat/forumchat.asp?sigdir=PMFriends See you there! Sally Sally (442Olds) Subject: New chat User's IP Address: 209.214.75.8 July 06, 1998 (8:08 PM PDT) Ignore the last posting this should work..http://www.delphi.com/dir-app/chat/forumchat.asp?sigdir=PMFriends Author: PJay IP Address: 208.155.131.161 Subject: re: creating templates??? Date: 7/10/98 6:46:23 AM PST Message: Lynn, your a person after my own heart! I make folded merchandice tags from the business card templates. I scoot everything over to the right side, add a text block over at the left side for an address, and fold them where my store name is on the front, the inside is blank for writing prices and the back has a little "you have purchased...." thank-you sentence. I sent this into PrintMaster and they e-mailed me that they would include it in the next version of PrintMaster. Think that means I get a complimentary copy?? I've wanted to make bi-fold business cards but after deciding there was no easy way, I just decided to run them back through and print on the back too. Hmm, maybe I'll try it again. PJay Jill (*) Subject: Reinkers news flash-- Thanks Larry! 7/15/98 8:52:58 AM PST Hot off the wire.....Spoke to the owner of the reinking company that Larry recommended. He will offer free shipping to all of us from this chat board when ordering products. He also gave me a thorough explanation of why the new Epson cartridges don't reink well. It's the story that we've heard bits and pieces of during the past several months. The new sponge does not retain the ink. The owner said that when he sells ink bulk ink to Epson owners, he always reviews the need for the old type of sponge. It would be nice if other companies would tell us that. Other companies do not even appear to carry the old type of cartridge. He carries all types of cartridges for reinking a variety of printers as well as generic cartridges, even if you don't want to reink. I've been using one already and it is the same high quality that I've been used to. Make sure to mention that you are a member of the Printmaster Chat Board to receive your free shipping. Next month the company will be handling high end coated papers at discounted prices. I felt the generic Epson cartridges were very reasonable....$8.95 for black and $12.95 for color. When I think about the numerous cartridges I've had that had to be thrown out after one reinking....well...enough said. His phone number if 1-800-786-5521 and the company name is Think Inc. Thanks Larry for this source. Cheers. Jill Stuart Elflett (stuart_elflett@partsovernight.com.au) Subject: Post from the Other Forum... 7/15/98 1:14:10 PM PST For those that don't read the other forums, here is a copy of a post from the PM Webmaster, regarding the situation with posting Online cards... ____________________ Author: Webmaster at Printmaster IP Address: 205.156.204.169 Subject: re: On-line Greeting Card Problem Date: 7/14/98 6:53:25 PM PST Message: There is a problem with older versions of the PrintMaster program sending online greeting cards. We are preparing a fix and hope to have it posted within the next day. The problem arose when moving the website over to Mindscape from a third party. Earlier versions of PrintMaster used one address (which is causing the problem) to send cards and later versions (which works correctly) used another. Please check the PrintMaster site for information regarding the fix for this problem. Thank you. ____________________ I thought that may interest some of you... Cheers, Stuart Jackie (dreamseas@worldnet.att.net) Subject: printer banding/epson 7/23/98 10:27:28 PM PST I don't have same model Epson. But I have changed to microweave off and high speed off under options and. You might also try increasing your dpi to 720. I have good luck getting rid of banding by both of these methods at different times when cleaning cycle didn't work. I have sometimes had to run cleaning cycles 6 times once or twice. I do not re ink though I am using generic cartridges from Think Inc. hope this helps. Jackie Glenn (*) Subject: Missing Color Epson stylus II/Nikki 7/23/98 9:17:13 PM PST Well I found your answer. Q: One of my colors is missing. What should I do? A: Calibrate colors in the driver setup to the specific application or image. Set to Default and adjust from there. Perform selftest (Press Load/Eject and power printer on) and check that seven colors are produced. If seven colors are not produced, perform default set mode (Press Economy/Condensed and power printer on) to inspect dots. If test print shows missing dots, perform two cleaning cycles; (COLOR Cleaning)-Press the PAUSE Button, then, Alt and Print Mode 'OR' (BLACK Cleaning) Press the PAUSE, then, Alt and Economy/Condensed. Run the selftest again to see if printing has improved (Power on the Printer while holding down the Load/Eject-Button. If the selftest is still missing one of the four colors, try replacing the ink cartridge. If the condition persists, have the printer sent in for repair. Maurice (m@azstarnet.com) Subject: Inkjet printers 7/24/98 4:08:18 PM PST Hi everybody, about two years ago this same question was posed on this chat room: "What is the best inkjet printer." At that time we came to a consensus. If you want durability and a mechanically superior printer, go HP. If you want perfect color rendition, then almost any other brand will do as well. If you don't care about cost of the printer and its consumables (ink), go Alps. The very best color rendition, at a cost. I worked for 33 years with exclusively HP equipment doing medical research. There is none better. At times our procurement department pulled a fast one on us and bought other brands, on the premise they were less expensive. To their chagrin they found out that they spent more on eventual repairs than if they had purchased HP equipment in the first place. --- Here at my office (I am retired now) we have had several other brands of inkjet printers. They all have been demoted to doorstops over time. Only the original HP660C, the HP694C and the splendid HP870Cse (my favorite) are still alive and well. And HP cartridges are a breeze to reink. Besides that I still have a 12-year-old laserjet, the HPIIP, that works like a charm. I have now set my sights on an HP1000Cse which can print up to 13 by 19 inch. I'll wait for Santa Claus to bring me that one, though. How many more days to Christmas? Maurice. Teresa (ESESAT@aol.com) Subject: error msg 7/25/98 12:18:21 AM PST 2.30 A.M.I finally got my problem with print shop fixed, ( I hope, so far so good, ) this might be good information to know. If you have alot of print software installed with alot of fonts, windows will give you error messages, I had to create a new folder & move all but about 500 of my fonts so they weren't in my font folder, if I ever need any not in my font manager, all I have to do is drag & drop it in to use it. I finally found this out on the print shop web site after about 2 hours of reading tech support things. I just thought I'd share this with you if you ever got the same error message on any print program. it might help you too. Finally I can rest & go to bed, brain tired! Goodnight. Glenn (*) Subject: Corrupted Files/Ed 7/25/98 9:11:51 PM PST Ed, here is a posting that was recently posted by (Deb) or Nameless as she usted to call herself. pacbell.net) Subject: deleting user files 7/20/98 8:18:54 PM PST if you are having difficulty getting into the picture/art files or your own project files, please follow the appropriate steps for your version of the program:For a version 3.0 or lower-- art files only-- Error message "PMW caused a General Protection Fault in Module PMW.EXE." Unable to access the Picture Album when selecting the Add Picture feature. SOLUTION Follow these instructions to rectify the error: - Exit Windows to a C:\> prompt (DO NOT go to a DOS prompt through a Windows DOS shell). - Type: CD\PMW and press ENTER. - At C:\PMW>, type: DEL _000PICT.ALB and press ENTER (the numerical number may vary). With that in mind, type: DIR *.ALB and press ENTER to get the exact file name before deleting the corrupt Picture Album file. - Type: EXIT for Windows 95 users. Type WIN for Windows 3.1x users and press ENTER to restart Windows. - After restarting PrintMaster Gold, the Picture Album should now be accessible. If you are having difficulty with your own projects, follow the steps above, except replace _000pict.alb with _000proj.alb If not, 9 times out of 10, the problem is the video display driver. You can obtain an updated video display driver from your computer manufacturer----If you are using a ver 4.0 program.... for problems with art files: SOLUTION -Exit PrintMaster Gold -Click Start > Programs > Windows Explorer. -Double click the PrintMaster Gold folder (default is PMW). -Double click the following folders: USER001 > Art . -Click Tools in the menu bar and select Find > File or Folders. -Type the following: USERART.* and click "Find Now" or press . -10 Files should appear. Delete all 10 files, exit the Windows Explorer, and launch PrintMaster Gold. -You will loose any imported images.If you are having difficulty with Your own projects in ver 4.0........SYMPTOM C++ runtime error... when accessing projects. SOLUTION -Exit PrintMaster Gold -Click Start > Programs > Windows Explorer. -Double click the PrintMaster Gold folder (default is PMW). -Double click the following folders: USER001 > Projects. -Click Tools in the menu bar and select Find > File or Folders. -Type the following: USERPROJ.* and click "Find Now" or press . -10 Files should appear. Delete all 10 files, exit the Windows Explorer, and launch PrintMaster Gold. You will be prompted to import saved projects. Follow screen prompts and everything should be fine once back in PrintMaster Gold. Author: Lynn Campbell Behnke Alambil@aol.com IP Address: 152.163.197.83 Subject: Unwanted dots on envelopes Date: 7/4/98 6:37:17 AM PST Message: To whom it may concern: I haven't been able to get on for several days, so if this has already been addressed, please forgive the repetition. Several people were having problems with unwanted dots appearing on their envelopes. There was a suggestion posted to stop fast bitmap printing and go to smoothing, but that didn't help me. (I am using an HP Deskjet 722C.) There is now a solution on the Mindscape Automated Help line, but here it is to save you a call: You need to go to the print screen which allows you to select the way envelopes feed. One of the check box choices below is Landscape Reversed. Be sure it is checked. (They didn't tell me this but I found one has to reverse the placement of one's envelopes in the printer: flap still up but on the right instead of the left.) Leave the printer properties set for 8.5 x 11 instead of choosing an envelope size. Reversing the direction that everything prints (but not making addresses backwards--which was my concern)makes the placement correct and eliminates the dots. This was really helpful to me. Lynn Helga (Voyager) Subject: Jan > Online cards 8/8/98 7:21:57 PM PST Hi Jan and Stuart. Here is the URL for the patch to fix the problem with sending online cards... http://www.mindscape.com/service/updates/pmcard.htm...Helga=^..^= Marty (marty@csj.net) Subject: CAC Gold 2plus and weather 8/9/98 7:32:35 PM PST To upgrade to CAC Gold 2.1 you have to have CAC Gold Plus2. If you have that, go to their site and email them about it. I've changed email programs, etc. so I don't have all the info anymore. This site may have some info http://members.tripod.com/~cacfriends/ Larry - it is hot and humid here. My son got married last weekend and the weather was uncommonly lovely. They were married in Indiana and the temp got no higher than 78 with a very low humidity. The bride looked lovely! I'm very happy. Marty Helga (Voyager) Subject: Robin > CAC 2.0 8/9/98 8:08:03 PM PST Hi Robin. When I wanted to upgrade from CreataCard Gold 2 to version 2.1, I called (1-800-521-8604) and asked for the free "Stickers and Postcards CD-ROM."...Helga=^..^= Helga (Voyager) Subject: Transferring Graphics CD Library 8/10/98 4:57:54 PM PST If you purchased the Graphics CD Library from PM, you can transfer it to the new PM7. For now, copy the following and keep in a safe place:..." Thank you for contacting Mindscape in regards to your Printmaster CD Graphics collection. If you upgrade to Platinum 7.0, we would be glad to re-access your Library for you at no extra cost. Simply contact us at 1-800-888-9078, and one of our Customer Service Representatives will be able to provide with an access code to unlock those graphics. Please be in front of your computer, with your Printmaster program running."....This also is the same phone number you need if/when you need to have the graphics unlocked after reinstalling the program. Looks as though the new version will be of the Platinum type. We are out of valuable metals already, are we not?? No suggestions yet for a photo editor, but that's all right. I'll check back. Hi Larry.....Helga=^..^= Larry (R2) Subject: TLC/Mindscape>Version 7.0 offered in two flavors (1 for Mac)>Steph 8/10/98 7:18:06 PM PST Evening Steph, and we too are ANXIOUSLY awaiting the OFFICAL word from TLC/Mindscape. They might be too busy marketing it to those who might wish to purchase it as opposed to those who's LONGTIME, LOYAL addiction helped bring them to this point in the first place. As per the catalog: An entry level PM Publishing Suite 7.0 has 12K high quality images, 1K "vivid" photos (as opposed to non vivid or just plain dull?) 43K ready-to-print professional templates AND access to over 15K images via the Online Art Gallery..(requires 8mb RAM and 486-66mhz min on PC and system 7.5, 16mb RAM on a 68030/33mhz Mac (whatever they are{grin}….now onto the BIG gun..DELUXE 7.0 with a whopping 72K high-quality images including 10K spectacular photos(whew), 64K ready-to-print, professional templates and access to the same 15K images Online. Minimums are Win 95 (no mention of 98) 16mb RAM and a 486-66mhz…sorry no Mac…..$49.99….sigh, if the base price of Deluxe is that God help us for the rest to come $$$$$$$$………Larry Jill (*) Subject: Reinkers 8/10/98 9:03:02 PM PST Good evening folks. Having just given THINK Inc. another order, thought I'd pass on some helpful information. My black Epson 600 cartridge has now been reinked eight times. Wondering out loud how long this will last, the owner of the company said they reink their office Epson cartridges about fifteen times each. The Epson cartridge should be able to take in 10cc of ink. When it will not absorb that much, the sponge is losing its ability to retain the ink. I did notice that the capacity started diminishing after about the fifth refill. This is not a problem, you will just have to refill more frequently. You will know when the cartridge has run its course when you inject the ink and it immediately leaks out the bottom hole. It is a pleasure to put in an order and have the owner tell me it will be shipped tomorrow. It is shipped by Priority Mail and the shipping is free to Printmaster Chat Board people. I am now purchasing ink from them since everything has been top quality. After all of the hassles I've posted over the past year of reinking, it is a pleasure to finally have the problem solved. If you are the least bit hesitant about reinking your printer, take the plunge. An easy assumption for everyone reading this post is that you enjoy creating cards, newsletters, pictures, etc. Printing your masterpieces takes ink. There is no need to save the colored ink for special projects when you reink. A 16 ounce bottle of black Epson ink costs only $29.00 and that will give 36 refilled cartridges. One safely needs four of the generic Epson cartridges at $8.00 each. This is a total of $61.00 plus tax (no shipping). To purchase that quantity of Epson cartridges at COSTCO would cost approximately $20.00 each for a total of $720.00. ....and that's a discounted price! Yes, that's the truth and we begin to understand that the price of a printer is insignificant compared to the price of the cartridges. Cheers. Jill Glenn (*) Subject: Refilling Lexmark/Kitty 8/14/98 7:40:30 PM PST Kitty the first line of this should have been buy an HP, but here is what I found on the Lexmark refilling. Since you have a cartridge that is ruined may as well check it out. Theory The ink in these cartridges is retained because the cartridges have internal sponges. These cartridges are similar in construction, except that some have a single black or uni-color chamber, whereas the other tri-color cartridges have three chambers for cyan, magenta, and yellow. Step 1) Put the cartridge on some paper towels in an area where you can tolerate a spill. Step 2) We must remove the plastic top. Two methods: Gently clamp the cartridge bottom in a vise or similar device. Grab the top with a large wrench or set of pliers and crack off the top. This will likely break some plastic, but this is generally cosmetic damage. Lay the cartridge on a solid surface and put the edge of a sharp knife at the intersection of the different colors of plastic. Hit it sharply with a hammer. Then pull off the top. You will see a single fill hole (in the case of the black cartridge) or three different fill holes (in the case of the color cartridge). Step 3) For the black and uni-color cartridges, take a syringe bottle and fill it 1/3 to 1/2 full of ink -- about 10 to 15 ml. For the tri-color cartridges, you will only need about 5 ml of ink -- about 1/6 of a syringe bottle. Step 4) For the tri-color cartridge, test which hole takes which color by inserting a toothpick or an empty syringe needle into each hole, removing the probe and looking at the color. Draw a diagram so you'll remember which hole takes which color. Tape over two of the holes so the ink won't accidentally contaminate the other two colors if a chamber overflow while filling it. Step 5) Insert the needle fully into the appropriate hole. Inject the ink very S-L-O-W-L-Y and watch until the sponge is saturated. (Some colors will not be empty, so don't expect the sponge to absorb the entire amount. Step 6) Repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 for the other two colors with different syringes. Step 7) Remove the tape on the holes. Step 8) Put the top back on and tape down in place. Step 9) Set on a paper towel for an hour as a drip precaution. Expect a few drips. To Clean the Printhead Follow the directions in the printer manual. If this doesn't work, soak only the printhead in simmering water for five minutes. You may add up to 50 percent ammonia for tough clogs. Koye (bklj@ivic.net) Subject: T-Shirt Peeling/Sally 8/20/98 10:32:05 AM PST Don't know if this will help. Use cotton/poly tee shirt. Wash and rinse in vinegar dry & press. Apply print..let dry..peel. Let the print set about 24 hours...rinse in vinegar again. Then wash again. This works for me. Koye Sally (442) Subject: twice in two days?! 8/20/98 10:21:43 AM PST OK about t-shirt transfers I have had a problem with the transfers peeling off after washing...why does this happen and how can I prevent it? Reba...what part of S. Jersey are you from? Sally Lynn Campbell Behnke (Alambil@aol.com) Subject: More info on new PMPlat 7 8/20/98 11:06:40 AM PST I got the PrintMaster Platinum 7.0 offer today by snail mail, so here's more info for those of you who are still waiting. It's not an upgrade. No previous version is necessary. It's 69.95 less $30. An extra $10 gets me Mega ClipArt 50,000. I also get Xoom Web Site Templates 250 (if I order in 30 days) Shipping for all is $7.95. I get to keep the Xoom even if I return Platinum 7. New features include: Web Page Design, T-Shirt Designs, Activities for Kids, Fold-up Dollhouses, Postcards, Bookmarks, Gift Bags, Ornaments, Puzzles, Coupons. The letter/brochure says "The original art gallery is now twice as big. 58,000 more images than the previous version." New Online Art Gallery. New "Year You were Born." New Automatic Border maker--duplicates any image to become a full border. "A new yearly feature that lets you create an entire year of calendars." "DrawPlus built in drawing tools--a full-featured drawing package." I called Best Buy here in Wichita and they're offering it for $69.99 with a $25.00 mail in rebate--no info on the extra goodies. I'm eager to hear from anyone who actually buys. Newest PrintShop from Broderbund is due out this week--maybe that's why it's being released now. Lynn Peter (Sweden) Subject: Capture programs > Delors 8/20/98 11:28:19 AM PST Hi Delors! I read a review of capture programs some time ago and the following three were about just as good, "it´s only a matter of taste": Capture Professional at www.creativesoftworx.com; HyperSnap at www.hyperionics.com and SnagIt at www.techsmith.com. I have d/l´ed all three but haven´t had the time yet to check´em out, think however that they are all very capable compared with other rather basic ones. Depends on your needs and size of purse also, of course... Peter :-) Stanee Rae (stanee-rae@worldnet.att.net) Subject: PM 7 -- Xoom Web Templates 8/20/98 1:09:04 PM PST Lynn -- I just got this email today about the 250 Xoom Web Templates. If this is included in PM 7 as a free gift, that's not a bad deal. This email was quite long, so I snipped: XOOM is offering the XOOM Web Site Templates 250 to the public from their web site for $79.95 and for members it will be $49.95. Today, through this special email offer, we can offer this to you, Xaos Tools customers for only $29.95. That's a savings of over 60% off of their web pricing and an extra $20 off of regular XOOM member pricing. Hurry, this offer is good through September 12, 1998. To order or for more information on this offer visit this secret URL: http://orders.xoom.com/tmp/xstmp819 Author: Maurice IP Address: 169.197.36.233 Subject: PM Gold 4.0 ---still with problems!! ? upgrade Date: 8/20/98 2:52:01 PM PST Message: Hi reba, don't wait for that snail mail. You could wait a long time. Just call them at 1-800-299-2082 and when they ask for a priority number, just tell them you misplaced it somehwere. They are eager to sell, so they will give you an instantaneous priority number. Maurice. Author: Maurice IP Address: 169.197.39.81 Subject: re: decreasing margins Date: 8/9/98 3:01:36 PM PST Message: Hi ###, "0" gives 1/16 inch top, 1/2 bottom and 1/4 sides -- "1,2,4,5,-2,-3,7" all give 1/2 top and bottom, 1/4 sides. --- "3, -1" both give 1/2 all sides. -- As you can see, bottom will always be 1/2 inch. It is the nature of the beast, the inkjet printer. Maurice. Stuart Kuperstock (skuperstock@learningco.com) Subject: ordering PM7 8/23/98 7:30:44 PM PST In the unlikely event that you are not able to get hold of PM7 Platinum locally, call me and I'll get a copy shipped out to you. Lead time is about 7 - 10 days, cost is $45.90 inclusive. My office is 423/670-2232; if you miss me, leave a voice mail and I'll get back to you. I'll need to put it on your Visa, MC, or AMEX. As an alternative, you can mail me a check payable to The Learning Company for $45.90 to The Learning Company, Attn: Stuart Kuperstock, 9715 Parkside Drive, Knoxville, TN 37923. Make sure you note PM7 Platinum on the memo line. Please note that technical support calls should go to 423/670-2040, option 3, option 1...thanks, Stuart Spamless (Spamless@nil.nil) Subject: USERs 8/28/98 7:38:23 AM PST Why do I have three user files 01,02,03? ------------- Each time you start PrintMaster, it checks with Win95 to see which user is logged on. If it is a new user, PrintMaster creates a new USERxxx directory (so each user of your computer can have his/her own project files). Perhaps you are the only user of your computer and wonder what happened! I would guess that sometime Win95 forgot your name and up popped the login window for Win95 and you gave a (even slightly) different name (say, Joe instead of Joseph) and then opened up PrintMaster. You can check which and how many users Win95 recognizes by finding out how many *.PWL files are in your \windows directory. You *can* remove all those *.PWL files, and remove the entries in... what is it? WIN.INI or SYSTEM.INI (which lists them as well); copy (including subdirectories, use XCOPY with the /S switch) the data from the USER directory (I refuse to call them folders ) that you want to some temporary directory; delete the USERxxx directories; and delete the PMUSERS.DAT file from the PrintMaster directory and finally reboot. Now just enter the userid you really want to use (and no password unless you want to have to login each time). NOTE: You will have to enter your passwords for your ISP and all other passwords that were stored in your *.PWL file. Perhaps you just want to delete all but the one *.PWL file you want to keep and log in as that user. You could just delete the PMUSERS.DAT file and NOT the *.PWL files (if you don't want to have to reenter your passwords) to reset PrintMaster to a single user, with a single USER001 directory for the current user... you lose the separate directories/projects for the other login-ids. Now start PrintMaster. It will create a new PMUSERS.DAT file without the other users. Now copy (including the subdirectories) the USERxxx data you had saved to this USER001 (probably) directory. You can have the system set up with several users, and use each of them yourself, and when you login to your computer choose the one you want which will give you access to other project files (useful if you sometimes use the computer and PrintMaster with projects for work, for home, etc. You can login as HOME or WORK and have access just to that project file as well as have Windows configured differently for each use). [When I had this problem, tech support told me I had overstressed PrintMaster and put too much in my project files and so PrintMaster had created a new user and forgot about the old user... they told me I had misconfigured it and had to uninstall, delete all directories, set windows to a clean boot, and reinstall. Nonsense. PrintMaster adds entries to PMUSERS.DAT for new users, not when an old user adds to his project file; it was not misconfigured and if I wanted to reset to one user, all I had to do was copy the directory I wanted to save, remove PMUSERS.DAT and restart PrintMaster then copy the data I had saved... personally, I wanted to clean out the extraneous *.PWL files and logins, so I deleted the, but it was not necessary -- you may or may not want to clean them out... but make sure you know all your passwords if you do, for you may have to reenter them.] Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Saving to floppy 8/28/98 7:11:55 AM PST How do I download my projects on to a floppy disk to save them and then how do I reload them back into the program --------------- When you have your project done, choose the File menu option and Save_As. You can then change the drive, directory, etc. and save with or without graphics and with or without adding to your listing of projects. I would recommend Save_As and saving to a directory on the hard drive without adding to your project list and then copying/moving the file to a floppy. The reason is that the file may be very large, too large for the floppy. By saving to the hard drive, you can check the size first and if it is too large, compress (ZIP) the file before saving it. If you add it to your project file it will demand that the file be on the drive/directory where you saved it (so you can't reorganize your files and expect your project list to know where you moved things). To load the project into PrintMaster, when the programme opens, choose the File menu and Open then choose the File option from the Project window that opens up and then Open_from_Disk which will let you change drives/directories and open the project. IF you chose to add your project to your project list, and IF you have not reorganized things (it is in the directory to which you originally saved it), you can use the option on the main screen to open your projects, choose it, and put in the floppy disk to which it was saved from PrintMaster (this will not work if you saved to the hard drive and later moved it to a floppy or if you reorganized things). If (for space reasons) you compressed (ZIPped) the project, you will have to unzip it, then open PrintMaster, then choose to open a file, then open the file from disk and change to the directory to which you unzipped it. Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: converting a card to a graphic (not screen capture) 8/28/98 10:19:50 PM PST Bingo! It is possible to convert a card to a graphic that can be sent to someone who does not have PrintMaster (they can then print it and fold it). First, print to a colour postscript driver. Next load into GhostScript and print... GhostScript includes the capability of printing to a graphic file... try 256 colour BMP at 120dpi. Voila (you may want to load into another graphics programme and resave as GIF to decrease the size). Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Business card 8/30/98 9:35:38 AM PST Hi there, I want to get a internet business going making business card but I'm wondering how to go about it and if the graphics will go through if I send them through an E-Mail address.Does anyone know?? ------------- Business Cards? Or a business designing greeting cards? To whom will you be sending the cards? A printer (meaning a printing business to do, say, offset printing) (to print them) or to the customer (to print them him/herself on card stock)? If you save a PrintMaster project to disk, you can then use the SEND item on the FILE menu to send it (provided you have a MAPI server -- maybe only Windows Messaging -- set up) (or you can save it and then, compress first is a good idea, and send as a file attachment). This, however, sends the PrintMaster file (say, for a greeting card, a *.CAR file that needs PrintMaster -- and if they had PrintMaster, they would probably design their own!). If you know the customer's printer, you can install a printer driver for his printer (you don't need the printer to install the driver) configured to print to FILE and print out the card/business_card. Compress and send the file (as an email attachment). The customer then takes the file (say, CARDS.PRN) and does (after loading card stock): COPY /B CARDS.PRN PRN: to dump (binary, the /B switch) the file to the printer (that prints it out at his location on his printer) (note... a printer file can be very large). If to a printer (a printing plant), check if they can accept PS (PostScript) or EPS (Encapsulated_PostScript) files. If so, you can load a PostScript driver (many in Win95... use a colour postscript driver if you want colour -- e.g. in Windows 95, my version, under Printers, there is an entry for Kodak and it has a single driver... a colour PS driver) configured to print to file (PS or EPS?). When you design your card, choose that driver and print to file for sending. The trick is to get a format that the recipient can use... either a printer dump file that he/she can dump to his/her printer (if you send the card via email to the customer) or a format your printer (if you send to a printing business) can use (see if they support PS or EPS -- try a small job to check the quality). Once you have the file to send, email can handle binaries (as MIME attachments)... provided your recipient can handle MIME attachments! If they cannot, it is a bit more difficult (you would have to learn to use, and so would the customer, UUencoding/decoding which would permit sending the binary in the body of a text message, rather than as an attachment). (hmmm... I am too verbose! -- but comprehensive!) Chris Black (support@learningco.com) Subject: Technical Support Postings 8/28/98 8:36:02 AM PST PrintMaster Club Members, At The Learning Company Technical Support Center, we pride ourselves at maintaining the highest level of service and professionalism available over our competitors. A statement made by an employee did not reflect this level of professionalism. Please accept my sincere apologies for the comments made by a member of The Learning Company Technical Support staff. The Printmaster forum has been provided as an avenue for our customers to share ideas in a moderated environment. Although the decision of my technicians to post to the forum was not directed by the company, I have observed from your postings that their interaction has been welcome and appreciated. Ultimately my charge is to provide assistance that adds value to the quality of our product line. Based on your feedback, Technical Support will now explore the possibilities of developing a technical discussion and assistance forum on the Internet to be launched in the near future. Until such time, we will confine our Internet support initiative to electronic mail. If you desire assistance until such time, please do not hesitate to e-mail us at support@learningco.com or call at 423/670-2020. Sincerely, Chris Black Director of Technical Support The Learning Company Stanee Rae (stanee-rae@worldnet.att.net) Subject: Sound Files 8/30/98 3:18:38 PM PST Looked in Osborne's Complete HTML Reference (their web site is www.osborne.com) and found a couple tags to add sound to web pages. I'm subsituting [ and ] for the usual greater-than and less-than symbols, so as not to mess up the chat. [A HREF="filename.wav"]Sound File Name [/A] [EMBED SRC="filname.wav" HEIGHT="60" WIDTH="144"] This tag is for the LiveAudio plug-in for Netscape 3.0 or higher. [BGSOUND SRC="filename.wav"] This is for IE version 2.0 or higher. A photographer I know has a JavaScript sound player in his web site, with a control that allows you to adjust the volume, at www.pbpix.com Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Drives 8/30/98 7:02:43 PM PST What are the advantages/disadvantages of a Zipdisk or a Superdrive disk that uses the 100 megabite floppys? Am considering one but don't know which to get. ------------ ZIP drive: Advantage... there are a lot of them around (pretty much a standard), available in IDE, parallel port, SCSI versions (do not get a ZIP_PLUS which is parallel port and SCSI for it is not really SCSI, since you cannot daisy chain other SCSI peripherals with the ZIP_PLUS on a SCSI bus). Disadvantage: reports of some (how many?) drives going bad (data loss, the Click of Death), expensive disks, not compatible with 3.5" floppies (need a regular 3.5" drive too), more expensive. Super120: Advantage: Saves more data (120MB... ZIP drives handle about 97MB... depending upon what you mean by MEGA), 3.5" compatible, less expensive(?). Disadvantage: too new, not enough info on reliability (check out some newsgroups for both drives to read complaints about both drives); does not format 3.5" floppies, I have heard (and I always low level format a floppy before using it, since I have had too many, right out of the box, with bad sectors) (so you will probably want a regular 3.5" floppy drive too); Don't know what versions there are (IDE bus? SCSI bus? USB bus? parallel port bus?) (check that); too new... don't know if they will become more ubiquitous than ZIP drives (will they become a standard?). Better: CD-R or CD-RW drive: More data (650 MB): can be read on (almost all) regular CDs (some older CD drives have problems with CD-RW disks and/or blue CD-R disks): Can be used to burn your own music CDs: cheap disks (CD-R disks go for a couple of dollars each: CR-RW are much more expensive: RW=READ/WRITE, you can write and read and overwrite data: R=read, you can write to the disk ONCE and then just read it, you can not overwrite the data, but since the disks are so cheap, one just makes a new one and throws out the old! Problem? Time to write a 650MB disk!). The drives are more expensive though (ZIP drives were about $200, now down to the lower $100-200. The cheapest CD-R drives are over $200, but you will save on the disks). Others... JAZ, etc. (like ZIP or Super120 but holding 1Gig). Expensive drives. Expensive disks. If you can afford it, I would go for CD-RW or CD-R. If you want a GIG of storage, for example, the cheapest you can get ZIP disks is about $17 so another $170 for storage plus the cost of the drive. For a CD-R drive, you need two disks (and get 1.3 Gig of storage) and they cost just a couple of bucks (CD-RW disks are still much more expensive) and anyone with (a fairly recent) CD drive can read it (or use the Gold CD-R disks). If you want compatibility with the largest number of large media drives out there, try a ZIP (but check out the newsgroups where ZIP owners complain about the reliability) (alt.iomega.something_or_other-I_forget). If you go for a Super120, check out newsgroups first! If you go for CD-R or CD-RW check newsgroups first (especially for info on software bundled with the drives -- say, for burning your own music CDs) Marty (csj) Subject: URL for PM4 problems - new people 8/31/98 5:21:50 PM PST Here is the URL for some common problems with PM4 - just in case someone new checks in here that has problems with PM4. http://www.mindscape.com/service/faqs/pm4win.htm Larry (R2) Subject: Welcome "Stevie" 8/31/98 5:57:40 PM PST Welcome "Stevie" and glad you saw the "humor" as it was presented as such. On the red PM 7.0 offer which takes you to the store it mentions nothing about the offer just being for 30 days only. Do you have some inside info you wish to share with us, (or was that some?{G}) For those who use this special price please note the special "VIP code" of PMPUPWEB for you special upgrade pricing of $39.95 +S&H….FYI… Platform: Windows 95 or 98, Age: 9 to adult (hmm, mental or chronological?) LMAO in sunny CA…..Larry Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Four fold cards: centering on interior panels 9/2/98 2:05:42 PM PST Ha! I finally figured out a simple(?) way to create, say, four fold cards and center things on the inside panels. The trick? Don't design on the inside panel (I assume the printer alignment is working to the extent that the front and back of the card come out centered). (of course if you want a four fold, say, tall card, and one large inside panel across the page on the inside, rather than a separate left and right panel, use PM without this trick). First, design and create the front of the card. Now, go to the inside and keep going to the back (this example is for a four fold tall card). First, draw a rectangle on the back, then right click and choose to position it full page (cover the full panel). Then right click and set the lines (border) to none and the colour to none (a blank rectangle on the back of the card). Now design, say, the interior right panel of the card on the back (on top of this blank rectangle) -- use all the centering, etc. options you want. When done, use SELECT-ALL (make sure you are on the card when you do this, not inside a text box... inside a text box will SELECT-ALL the text... if all the handles for all the text boxes and graphics show up, you have selected all the items). Now, use CTRL-X (CUT, not copy... we don't want to leave a copy on the back of the card!). Now, go back to the inside of the card. Paste (CTRL-V). Now right click and choose GROUP (we want to treat this as one design for the moment). Right click and choose position... but use the MORE... option. Under the MORE option, choose to put this block of stuff on the RIGHT. If you want to do some further editing, say you notice a typo on the text box, right click and UNGROUP to gain access to the separate elements. Do the same for the left panel (if you want one). Then the back and then print. Easy enough to understand. The front and back panels reflect the margin at the edge of the page as well as the margin at the fold, while the inside, double panel, only reflects the margin at the edge of the page. By desiging the panel fully to cover the back panel (the blank rectangle) and moving it to the edge of the inside panel, it uses the positioning from the back panel (which properly reflects the margins). So... design on a (full -- the blank rectangle) panel that reflects the margins... SELECT-ALL, and CUT and paste into the interior... group (to preserve relationships) and put on the correct side (left/right). Easy enough... why didn't I think of this before? (I had been carefully moving and trial printing things to get centered interior panels... this is so much easier) Glenn (gwright@abilene.com) Subject: Irfanview/Tami 9/4/98 6:31:37 AM PST Tami, Irfanview 32 can be downloaded at.http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/info.html?fcode=000ABJ Maurice (m@azstarnet.com) Subject: International keyboard 9/6/98 4:53:58 PM PST Hi all, I didn't have any instructions either. Just experimented and came up with this: CNTRL + ALT + ? gives you ¿ --Same for ! to this ¡ -- All the tremas (umlauts in German) can be obtained by pressing " followed by any vowel to get ï ë ö ä ü and even ÿ (for Dutch) -- all the grave accents (for French as in voilà) by first pressing ` followed by any vowel to get à è ì ù ò -- Accent aigu (sharp accent in French) by first hitting ' followed by any vowel to get á é í ó ú --- All the above can also be applied to upper case characters, of course, É Ó Ö Ì Ù, and so on --- Now for the C or c cédille (used in French and Portuguese to make the C sound like an S in front of A, O, and U) click on ' followed by C or c to get Ç and ç. --- And finally the accent circonflex in French to denote that an S has been dropped from the old French word, as in hôpital, which is derived from the old word hospital. The circonflex is also still used in European Portuguese, not anymore in Brazilian) Click on ^ followed by any vowel to obtain â ô î û ê Â Ô Î Ê Û -- The disadvantage of the international keyboard is that, if you want to use the quotes as purely quotes, and not as a trema, you have to press the space bar after pressing the quotes, to prevent making a trema. Example: you want "a promise to remember" and not ä promise to remember" --LOL. Oh, I would forget the most important letter in Spanish, the ñ and the Ñ. You get it by pressing ~ followed by n or N. I know, this keyboard method is more limited than the character map, but for writing in other languages it is much faster, no copying to the clipboard. Once you get the hang of it, it proves to be real handy. Please let me know if you discover other combinations. I am interested, as a few have eluded me so far. Maurice. Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Version 7: what I think... 9/7/98 2:48:11 PM PST Well, having tried out lots of things in PM7, there are things I do like... and things I don't. As an upgrade, it does provide new features... but: Well, PM7 seems mostly to be hype. New projects!!! MASKS for the Kiddies!!! (a graphic of a cat's face or panda's face printed on a poster... cut it out and wear it) BOOKMARKS!!! (three rectangles on a poster, cut them out and call them bookmarks) CRAFTS!!! (example: some rectangles and triangles on a poster, joined together so when you print it, cut them out and fold it up you get a house) My take on the above? They are posters. Calling them new projects is hype. Get a book of kids crafts and scan, print (or photocopy) for more stuff (but then you don't do it on a computer!) There are a few (real) improvements: T-SHIRTS!!! (it used to be that you had to mirror your t-shirt stuff before printing reversed on t-shirt paper; now PM7 can automatically print in reverse) (my take: a tiny improvement) EXPORT (instead of copy/pasting, say, the front panel of a card to a graphics programme and saving it in your chosen resolution, you can immediately export to a graphic, you can choose the number of pixels across and down: For calendars this even includes the lines making up the dates grid (which did not get copied in version 4 if you did a copy/paste to a graphics programme) -- but watch the resolution, or those lines may disappear) (my take: an improvement, but if you want later to rescale, choose resolution, etc. you still should have a separate graphics programme) FONTS The pull down menu for fonts now shows an example (gee... PM version 1 did that) (my take: an improvement that should have always been there). DrawPlus A vector drawing programme (nice to have) (my take: nice to have). Tables Simple tables you can have in your projects (my take: a definite improvement). Yearly calendars Now you can save a calendar project for a year, without saving each month as a separate project (this I like). When you were born History snippets (useful when creating birthday cards, for example) (my take: there are web sites with more information; like the sentiments this is a matter of taste. A small improvement). WebPage editor Well, it doesn't produce decent HTML code. The pages created are almost none of them scalable (do the words scroll bar sound familiar?) (PM is good at laying out graphics... heck, one could always have used PAINT to create a graphic, save it and call it a web page... PM does allow inclusion of other graphics, e.g. animations and links, and produces badly designed, from the HTML viewpoint, but nice looking, from a graphics layout design, web pages... it is not a good HTML editor but can be used to create quick web pages, just don't let anyone see the source code) (note that even simple text tables are converted to space hogging graphics) (it looks like PrintMaster realized that they can do good graphics layout, so let's call the result a webpage and advertise it after adding the capability to use links) (my take: I may use it for simple, unscalable, web pages... but for anything else, will use different programmes). Rotatable bit maps (You can now rotate graphics, even bitmaps, besides vector formats) (my take: a definite improvement) Some things have not improved: There is still no access to the separate interior panels of cards (for centering, etc.). Exporting a project does not export the full page image (just the current panel). You get more templates (mostly for posters, called new things -- masks, bookmarks, etc.) and get to pay for the graphics you bought when you got Platinum version 4 again (has anyone tried editing the INI files to see if you can get PM7 to work with version 4 graphic disks? If so, and you got PM4 Platinum, you could get Publishing_Suite version 7 and use your graphics). More marketing ploys (the ONLINE_GRAPHICS catalog is on the programme disk, so they know precisely what those graphics are... why aren't they on a disk? To force you to go to PrintMaster.COM... putting some graphics in a form that forces you to visit hem gives them marketing info... so they can send you ads! or maybe sell the info! heck, everyone's gotta make a buck) (my take: I am not a fan of advertising tricks, such as... "You bought it? Well, to use this feature you have to give us marketing information and accept more advertising..."). It runs much more slowly than version 4 (especially on startup, so you get to read the license agreement each time you start it). You must have IE on your system (if you don't, you get IE4 without an icon on the desktop) -- apparently the help screens use the MS Java engine (built into IE -- I wonder, and suspect, that it updates at least your Java engine if you have IE3) (you may consider getting IE4 an advantage instead of a possible problem area... but there are many people who have problems with it, in spite of the general attitude that one should "be good little boys and girls and accept what is good for you. Big daddy Bill has decided that IE is what you will use, whether it conflicts with old software, mouse drivers, video driver or whatever... if you don't like it, you can't just not use it, but must use it and it is your fault if there are problems."). Personally, I like a choice -- but PM will install IE on your system (IE4 if you don't have IE) with neither warning nor option not to install. I had no choice. (my take: It does run slowly -- I know folks who complain when it takes ten seconds for Word to pop up... expect to wait 30_seconds to a minute to start PM7. I like to choose what is on my system, especially files that so deeply integrate into the OS -- I don't like someone radically changing my S without telling me or giving me a chance to say no. Heck, how would you like to purchase, say My New Programme and nstall it to have it change your OS to Linux? or Win3.x? Had I known this would happen I would not have gotten PM7, but now IE4 is in my OS and only major surgery can remove it.). There are improvements (the font sample display; rotatable bitmaps; a simple WebPage design tool -- but hide the source code! or use a much better freeware HTML editor, like the one that comes with NetScape Communicator; more templates; more graphics; vector drawing tool; etc.) and it is an upgrade (also to your OS if you don't already have IE) but most of what I consider improvements (font sample, rotatable bitmaps, yearly calendars) are small, but real, improvements missing in the hype about the programme (which touts bookmarks, crafts, etc.). I don't like PrintMaster's attitude that graphics should be in proprietary compressed files (instead of standard *.JPG, *.CGM, etc.) making it extremely time consuming to use them in other programmes but giving them the chance to sell you again the same graphics you bought last year. I don't like the ONLINE_GRAPHICS marketing ploy (heck, the catalog is on the disk... why not the graphics? To force you to give them a chance to advertise to you and give them marketing info). Small improvements (I would have been honest and called it version 4.5, but I am not a marketer). Worth it? Well, if you are upgrading from version 4 and don't get a rebate (though there has been mention in the CHAT room on PrintMaster.com of difficulties, and long waits, in getting any rebate out of MindScape) -- no. If you want to get your first home cardprinting programme (to print cards, calendars, etc.) and don't mind having IE on your system -- yes (if you don't have IE on your system, say, you have Win95a, and install it, you will get IE4 and this may cause some problems). If you do get it at a decent price (and don't already have lots of graphics) -- maybe (but even if you have Platinum 4 and have all the graphics you want, I doubt you will be able easily to use them with version 7 -- you may have to buy those graphics again). I will be keeping my copy both for the small improvements (though it does run so much more slowly) and to have IE4 on a disk in case it has to be reinstalled (went to MS web site to download the latest version... at 28.8kbs should be about 2hrs download... but MS runs on WinNT machines... they can be slow... the projected dowload time was over 5hrs... nope). Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Register No. 9/8/98 10:45:46 AM PST Where can i find the registation number for pm gold deluxe.? ----- To enable the free fonts/graphics? On most versions, simply click the HELP option and then ABOUT in PM. The version number will appear. Suppose this is 123456. Take the final four digits and reverse them (in this example, that would give 6543 as the number to enable the fonts/graphics). Some bundled versions (e.g. the HP Celebrations bundle with PM4, Publishing Suite) have a different version number but use the registration number for the standard version. To find a list of all the version numbers (and hence a list of all the numbers to register fonts/graphics for your level, eg. 4 or the new 7) look in the PM directory for the file MSREG.INI. Examine that with a text editor. If the last four digits, reversed, of the number that appears with HELP|ABOUT in your copy (a bundled copy) don't work, use the last four digits (reversed) of the number listed in MSREG.INI for the standard Deluxe or Publishing Suite, or whatever. Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Video driver 9/8/98 11:02:43 AM PST I installed Win98 about a week ago,and PM7 a few days before Win98.... I know I have the latest video driver... I increased the work area to 20 from 15, but that still doesn't do the trick. ------- Couple of things to try (you may not want to try all of them): I had the problem when opening several projects, one after the other in PM7. It may have been that Win9x (95, OSR2, in my case) fixed it. (when Win9x finds troubles, the next time it boots it sets up things a bit differently: if it still finds problems, the next time it tries something else on boot -- in fact, two times Win95 locked up on booting after I installed PM7 -- it was trying to fix things and made an error... so I rebooted -- finally the problem is gone -- so I don't know if the next suggestion actually helped or Win95 fixed it itself... that is one problem with Win9x -- since it makes changes trying to improve things, one never knows if one fixed the problem or if Win9x fixed it...) Also... try turning down the video acceleration (CONTROL_PANEL, DISPLAY, SETTINGS, ADVANCED_PROPERTIES, PERFORMANCE, HARDWARE_ACCELERATION). I turned mine down to zero, ran PM a few times... then turned it up to the top and it still worked... did I fix it or did Win9x? For some computers (e.g. Toshiba Infinia that I have) folks have had problems with the video (latest) drivers in Win98, so they disabled and let Win98 install it's own drivers which seemed to be better. So... maybe the problem will go away (intentionally invoke it, then reboot... maybe Win9x can fix it): you can turn down the acceleration in the video driver (that may help, and maybe you can turn it up again later): the latest video drivers may not be so good as the ones that Win98 itself can provide. When I had the problem, I increased my use space up to 99Meg... it didn't fix the problem (now I am using 5Meg and haven't had the problem for awhile). Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: PM7 -- HINT 2 9/8/98 7:01:10 PM PST (the first hint was not to turn off "Use Design Check" in the online preferences, as then you may not be able to save any web page work you do). Someone in Tips and Tricks wanted to print a catalog of graphics (not sure if from PM or from a disk directory)... here is the Hint I posted there: First, you have to have a catalog of the files to print. If you want to print a catalog that PrintMaster has (or which you get after choosing keywords and find) it is easier. If you want to print a catalog of graphics you have on a disk somewhere, you have to do something first. The thing you have to do first is: From the HUB choose ART GALLERY (or choose it while designing a poster, for example). Next choose FILE (from the ART GALLERY menu, not the main menu) and IMPORT. Now browse to where your graphics are. Select the ones you want to catalog (to catalog all in a directory, click on the first, and then hold the shift key down and click on the last -- to select multiple files hold down the CONTROL key while clicking on them). Now use the NEW button at the bottom to call this catalog something (since you don't want to mix it with other graphics) -- say, what else? CATALOG. Do NOT check the MAKE LOCAL COPY OF FILE unless you want to put another copy of the graphic that is already on disk in your ART directory in your USERxxx section (I don't like to have multiple copies of each graphic I own). Now choose IMPORT. Either way, by opening an existing catalog or creating a catalog from files on disk, you get a catalog of the files you want to print. Choose the catalog you want to print (e.g. to print thumbnails from a directory where you just created the CATALOG catalog, you will find it under collection: YOUR OWN, category: CATALOG... check the properties of these, right click on an image, to see that you did not move a copy to the PM directory! it is catalogged from where it was). Now, from the ART GALLERY menu (with the catalog showing that you want to print) choose FILE|PRINT. You will be given the chance to print all, just the current page, or just the current picture (so you have to select the pictures first in a catalog). IF you cataloged the pictures from a directory (rather than from an existing catalog), you may want to remove the CATALOG (temporary catalog file used) after printing your thumbnails. Here is how: From the ARTGALLERY menu choose EDIT and then ORGANIZE YOUR OWN. Here you can delete the whole catalog file (that was just used to organize pictures for a thumbnail print). You can also print PROJECT catalogues (as well as picture catalogues) but the trick in either case is that one has to have a CATALOG to print (one cannot PRINT a catalog of graphics in a directory without first creating a CATALOG file -- you can select graphics from several directories and add to the same catalog to print). Did I find this in the PM help files? Sort of. There is information there for printing PROJECT CATALOGS (though they just mention FILE|PRINT, not from the PROJECT_GALLERY or ART_GALLERY menu -- and why is it called READY_MADE on the HUB screen and PROJECT_GALLERY when it pops up?). The trick is to have or create a CATALOG (of projects or graphics), use the GALLERY section file menu and choose PRINT. Jay Nabonne (jnabonne@mindscape.com) Subject: PM7 and IE4 9/9/98 9:41:12 AM PST Background: PM7 requires the "WININET" functionality to be installed in order to run. It also requires the Internet Explorer HTML help control in order to display the embedded help window in the workspace. The only way Microsoft allows this functionality to be shipped is as part of Internet Explorer. Bottom line: PM7 requires either Internet Explorer 3.0 or later to be installed on the computer in order to run. In that case, it does NOT install IE4. If no version of IE is installed on the computer, then IE4 is automatically installed. If you absolutely don't want IE on your computer, you can uninstall it after PrintMaster has installed. The WININET components remain on the computer (so PrintMaster will run). However, the embedded HTML help window will be non-functional. Note: This is a non-issue with Windows 98 since HTML help and WININET are built in to the OS. Jay Peter (peter.holm@dataselect.se) Subject: german character set > Eleanor 9/9/98 3:00:13 PM PST Hi Eleanor! The rlevant parts from the DOS manual is on its way to yr e-mail address. As to Spamless´ comments, yes he is correct that Microsoft changed (I prefer to say that they messed up a beatiful standard) the original DOS character standards in so much that the extended character set with codes between 128 and 255 were changed...and that´s only Microsoft...to add to the confusion, companies like Adobe and Apple have yet different charcter sets. So, if you use a particular code page (like CP437 for US DOS, which Windows changes to CP1252), the extended characters are different when you for instance key in these characters in Excel from Microsoft and PageMaker from Adobe. Due to that the ISO standards in these areas are not released freely on the Internet (you have to buy them!), they are not easily viewable on the WWW, but I have found some pages for anyone interested: The ISO 8859 Alphabet Soup at http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html and Codepage & Co. at http://czyborra.com/charsets/codepages.html. But, Eleanor, for the special german characters äöÄÖüÜß, you don´t need to worry, these are available to key in with ALT codes from the code tables that I send you. ß is for instance ALT + 225. Good luck and pls advise me if you jump into troubles. Peter :-) Delors (jharris@oro.net OR judy@jharristax.com) Subject: CD problem ~ Janet 9/10/98 2:25:23 PM PST Hello JANET! I, too, had a similar problem with one of the CD's in PM4. I contacted tech support and the following is their response. It may or may not apply. Sure wouldn't hurt to try it and see. TECH SUPPORT RESPONSE TO SIMILAR CD PROBLEM: "Dear Customer, Thank you for your inquiry to PrintMaster Technical Support. If PrintMaster Platinum or Deluxe seems to be unable to read certain CD's, they may have been mislabeled. The following instructions will help you correct this so that you can use all of your CD's properly. 1. Find the letter of your CD-ROM drive. This can be found by opening File Manager or Windows Explorer, or by double-clicking on the My Computer icon. Common letters are D, E, M, and Q. It will never be C. 2. Put the CD with which you are having trouble in the CD-ROM drive. 3. Open a DOS window, by clicking the MS-DOS Prompt icon. This will be in the Main group in Windows 3.1, or in your Start menu in Windows 95. In Windows 95, you can also click Start | Run, and then type COMMAND 4. Type the letter of your CD-ROM drive, followed by a colon. For example, M: 5. Type DIR and press Enter. 6. The first line of the result should be similar to "Volume in Drive Q is ..." and then a series of numbers and letters, such as PL3040A. This number-letter combination is the information you need to note. 7. Type EXIT and press Enter to return to Windows. If you are not having trouble with the first CD in the Platinum edition or with the Deluxe edition, skip to step 10. 8. Search for the file Pm4x.ini. In Windows 3.1, you will do this in the File Manager by clicking File | Search. Windows 95, you can click Start | Find -> Files or Folders. Make sure that you search the C: drive, or the hard drive on which you installed PrintMaster. You should locate the file in the C:\PMW\CONTENT folder, assuming that this is where you installed PrintMaster. 9. When you find this file, double-click it to open it. Change the label number in this list to the label number you found while in the DOS window. It may be listed more than once - change all references to it. By looking under the section [Friendly Names], you can see which numbers are attached to which CD. Afterwards, click File | Save, then File | Exit. 10. If you are having trouble with PrintMaster Platinum, search for the file Pmpl.ini, using the same techniques as in step 8. In this file, change all references to the number you found while in the DOS window. The section [Friendly Names] will indicate which numbers go with which CD. After changing the references, click File | Save, then File | Exit. You should now be able to use the CD's normally. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance. Sincerely, Matt F. - Product Support Technician." JANET, I hope your problem is as simple as this as it is a very simple solution if it is. Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Using BorderPlus for cards 9/11/98 12:45:50 PM PST Apparently the new BorderPlus creates a new type of PrintMaster file (extension, *.PMO). Border Plus cannot handle all the graphics formats that PM can (DPP files, such as all the LOGOS available) and PrintMaster has problems in printing *.PMO files upside down (as is necessary for the front panel of a card)... so here is a trick... once you use BorderPlus to design the border, export that to a graphics file, delete the border, reload the graphics file and resize it. Messy, yes -- but until PM provides a patch to PM7 (so it can handle *.PMO files), what can one do?: Details follow: How to use BorderPlus on the front of a card (patch... messy): (hopefully PM will provide a patch to PrintMaster so it can handle the *.pmo, new border file types, even when they get printed upside down for the front of a card, soon so one will not have to use this trick). First design your border and have it looking the way you want in project view. Click on the border so it (and only it) is selected. In project view use FILE|EXPORT. Export the border, NOT as the new *.PMO file (border) type but as a plain graphic (border files are the ones that give PM fits when printing upside down -- it can stil handle graphics) (say, GIF -- they have transparent backgrounds so you can put the border on top instead of having to layer it towards the bottom for other graphics). Now delete the border (heck, it is still selected, so just hit the DELete key). Now use art gallery and load (from disk or whatever) the graphic version of the border you saved. Resize to fit. Being a graphic, PM can handle printing this upside down (for the front of a card). violet femme (*) Subject: border-smaller angels- heres how-pam 9/13/98 1:18:24 PM PST here is the way: using borders in PM4: Select your image, duplicate as " tiled borders" you will see on your screen a border of large angels, 5 across, 5 down. As you figured out, even if you start with a smaller angel, you wil always get the same image size, 5 across, 5 down.Here is how to fool it and make the image smaller: 1. ungroup the border 2.group only the 5 going down.(either side) by lassoing it with mouse. 3. click yes to group. 4.NOW you are going to use that set of 5 as the image! Go to duplicate- staggered 5You will see now 5 groups of 5 SMALL angel. Ungroup them only once so that each group of 5 is together 6.Align 4 sets so that they form one straight line of 20 angels 7.Group , single duplicate and you have the other side. now to make the top and bottom the same size: 8.Use the 5th set remaining and ungroup the set. 9.group only 2 of them! 10. duplicate-small tiled header. You will see 10 little angels on one row and 10 more angels under them, all the same size as the side angels. 11. Ungroup twice! .Now is the tricky part: 12 Regroup the top 10 and regroup the bottom 10. 13.Interweave the 2 groups(think of putting your fingers from one hand into the other) . It will make one solid line of 20.( Use the grid numbers to align perfectly). 14. Group and single duplicate you now have the top and bottom. its realy easier than it writes! the idea is that PM dupicates in multiples of 5. For the small tiles it is 10. so if you give it an image made up of 2 ( or 3 etc.) it will duplicateTHAT and you will get corresponding smaller images to fit into the space. Maurice (m@azstarnet.com) Subject: PM7.0 9/15/98 6:21:50 PM PST Hi all, today I bought PM7 Premier at Costco for $37.99 with a $10 rebate. It comes with an Install CD, a Program CD and 5 Art CDs, plus American Greetings 3.0. I installed it in G:\PMW70 (that is on partition G of an 11.2 GB hard disk. Then I saved all 5 Art CDs to the Contents directory of G:\PMW70. How? From DOS I typed COPY I:\CONTENT\P7CD1ART.CDT G:\PMW70\CONTENT and pressed ENTER. (I: is my CD drive letter) It takes about ten minutes to copy this massive 620 MB compressed file. Then I did it again, this time using P7CD2ART.CDT, then 3ART, and so on till all five compressed files were lcoated in C:\PMW70\CONTENT, a bit over 3 GB of files in total. Then I put all the CDs back in the cardboard folder and I hope I will not have to look at them again. No more CD shuffling, and any picture loads in a split second. The only CD in the CD drive is the program CD. It is also possible to save that one on the hard disk. That is going to be the next project. I like PM7 much better this way. Everything works like a charm, fast and uncomplicated. After acclimatizing about an hour, I uninstalled PM4. PM7 does everything PM4 can do, and more. Maurice. Author: Lori IP Address: 209.94.162.100 Subject: block shadow behind letter When I print a message espcially using a white background you can see a block gray shadow behind each letter. I have tryed everything to remove it. Does anyone else have this trouble? Hi! Good news I think I figured out why I was getting a block shadow behind some print. I clicked on the advanced features in the printing box. I was adjusting the picture contrast because the color in my picture were too dark, I changed the picture contrast number to 298 in the scale and the gray shadow disappeared when I printed it out! Reply Top of Page Author: Maurice IP Address: 169.197.32.52 Subject: block shadow behind letter Date: 9/16/98 12:44:28 PM PST Message: Hi Lori, I was able to duplicate your error on my HP 870 Cse printer, by setting the intensity to the highest number (200 on my printer) or by selecting the dithering to "coarse." If I set the dithering to "none," or "fine, the block shadow disappears. I have mine normally set at "none" with the intensity set at about 50 (1/4 full scale). To sum it up, it might be caused by too high print intensity or by the dithering setting. Maurice (m@azstarnet.com) Subject: Blue guide lines in PM7 9/16/98 12:18:32 PM PST Hi everybody, I was happy to see that PM7 has blue, non-printing guide lines this time. PageMaker had them as long as I can remember. (Thanks, Jay, I am sure you had a hand in it) You see, when you want to line up several objects on a page, in PM4 and earlier we had to draw a tempory vertical or horizontal line (nothing snapped to it automatically, though) and we had to remember to delete that line for before printing. Now, in PM7, if you click on either the horizontal or the vertical rulers, you get a blue, non-printing guide line. To set that line very accurately,(to within 1/100th of an inch) you should watch the mouse pointer position indicator on the bottom, just right off center, while you drag that guide line to any place on the page. If you are satisfied with that position, you can lock that line in place by clicking on ARRANGE and LOCK GUIDES. (NOT "lock rulers") Any object (text box, image, shape) will now snap to that guide line. You might think this is not a big deal. Well, it is. In my eyes this is a major improvement. It makes placing objects on the page so much more convenient. My first project in PM7, for example, were identical 1/4 page handouts. I produced one and then clicked on EDIT|DUPLICATE 4 times. Then tried to place them evenly on the page. Normally this is not easy. With blue guide lines for top and bottom of each 1/4 of the page, it becomes a snap. (pun intended) Maurice. Maurice (m@azstarnet.com) Subject: Importing images in "My own" in PM7 9/16/98 2:14:52 PM PST Hi all, this is still a mixed bag. In one way it has improved, but in another one it has regressed. I produce five newsletters each month. So, I keep my favorite images in "My Own" category, so as not have to hunt for them each month. In PM4 we had one category. In PM7 we can have sub-categories of "My own." Bravo! But importing those images is still a bear. It is supposed to go "batch style." That is, you browse for your image directory on the hard disk, highlight all the file names and click on FILE|IMPORT. Well, there is no global highllight command. You still have to hold down either the Shift or the Insert key while you click on each individual file name. You cannot drag the mouse over all the files names to highlight them. Boo-hiss! Have you ever clicked on 762 file names, one after another? Also, you are supposed to get a preview of each image. The preview gives up after 18 thumbnails showing. And the last complaint, the file names it shows under the thumbnails (in the "your own" album,) just shows the file name only, without the extension. I have many identical images stored in bitmap and in vector format. So, now I am forced to stop the import procedure each time and click on FILE|PROPERTIES to find out the extension. Double boo-hiss! But, as I said before, I like the blue guide lines. Maurice. Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Un Registering 9/16/98 7:19:56 PM PST Glenn Is there some way to cancell the registration code? -------- Yes (took me awhile to find it). It is in the file \windows\MSREGUSR.INI Easiest way... make (if you don't have one) a \temp directory and give the command from a DOS prompt. move \windows\msregusr.ini \temp This gets the msregusr.ini file out of the \windows directory (but saves it). Now start PrintMaster and choose File|Free_Fonts_and_Graphics -- you can get to print out the registration form. After closing PrintMaster, you don't have to wait ... you can give the command from a DOS prompt: move \temp\msregusr.ini \windows to move back the version that has the registration in it (and answer yes to overwrite the new file that PrintMaster created which says you are unregistered). Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Un Registering: NOTE I forgot 9/16/98 7:57:47 PM PST To: Glenn: (To unregister PrintMaster) from a DOS prompt. move \windows\msregusr.ini \temp Now start PrintMaster and choose File|Free_Fonts_and_Graphics -- you can get to print out the registration form. After closing PrintMaster, then use the command from a DOS prompt: move \temp\msregusr.ini \windows (and answer yes to overwrite the new file that PrintMaster created which says you are unregistered). -------- Be **sure** to move back the old version! This is the MindScape Registered User file and if you don't move it back, you lose your registration on all the other MindScape products you have installed (say, older versions of PrintMaster, any other MindScape product). Instead of moving the file, you could just edit out the PrintMaster version 7 section. violet femme (*) Subject: fiskar dashes-janet 9/16/98 11:08:45 PM PST i think you mean you want a line of short dashes that will print as guideline for cutting: here's how: in PM3, 4 or 7: make a text boxthe width of the paper,select" stretch text", chose a simple font like tiempo or ariel(it really wont matter what size font) select the "-" key & repeat it across the page until you like the size of the dash( or use the period as a dot. (The more times you type the dash(or dot), the smaller it will become).When you re satisfied with size ,select typeface color" other"; move right bar up to the top for a very light color. Rotate it 90 degrees using the handle if you wantt dashes up/ down instead of across, or duplicate the text box if you want both. voila. I would save it as"fiskars" so you can use it as a template. Let me know if this is what you wanted to do. Maurice (mswin@azstarnet.com) Subject: Making subcategories of Your Own 9/17/98 9:10:29 AM PST Hi John, I made a subcategory of MY OWN category, called DANCE. Then I imported the 320 dance pictures I have stored on my hard drive, per your recipe "click on the first first, shift-click on the last file, all in between files will be hightlighted." Thanks! --- I still found other small bugs, sad to say. The very last file is WALTZ2B.TIF -- When all the thumbnails are shown, nicely alphabetized, as it should be for easy perusal, WALTZ2B.TIF is the very first one, followed by 12456.TIF, 12457.TIF, etc. Again, boo-hiss! Of course, I can delete WALTZ2B.TIF and then re-import it as the last one. But from now on, any new file I acquire and import will be attached on to the end, distroying my nice alphabet sorting. Have you seen any way of re-sorting, save of deleting the whole reference file in USER001\ART and re-importing all the files again? Maurice. Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Making subcategories 9/17/98 10:53:21 AM PST To Maurice: When all the thumbnails are shown, nicely alphabetized, as it should be for easy perusal ------- At least yours are alphabetized! When I just tried it (importing some graphics) they were alphabetized in descending order (so... now I first click on the *last* file and then shift-click on the *first* file to get ascending order!). Have you seen any way of re-sorting? --------- No... I tried EDIT|ORGANIZE_Your_Own, but the listing there is sorted, though not the thumbnails (I suspect the thumbnails are in one big graphic file and rearranging things there might not be easy). You can get a listing of the filenames starting with A, say, by choosing your category and giving "a*" as a FIND string ("*" does not get all the files, but using no find string gets all the files) One bug I found, for some *.CGM files (at least) that I imported (just two collections of CGMs into one catalog), when viewing the thumbnails in medium size (did not happen in small or large size), some of the graphics (which import OK into projects), IF they happen to be the first graphic on the screen display, also appear stretched out and repeated along a border above the thumbnail display (this only happened when I scrolled down and then back up for the first graphic). This did not happen with GIFs. Maybe it is my video display (or Windows...) pamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: long post: new graphics format (project in graphics) 9/17/98 12:32:58 PM PST To: Reena I want to save a "graphic/text" item I designed, not the whole project. I like to add my "design" to the back of greeting cards I send. ------- Hmmm... this will be a bit (more than a bit) long... PM4: Put your design on the front of a card (not the back), click that front, CTRL-A (select all), right-click and GROUP and save the project. When you want to add your design to the back of a new card, go to the back of the new card and then (don't close that project), open the other project with the design (on front) as well (as it is on the front, it will be right there for you). Click on the design (in this second project), CTRL-C (copy), click on the back of the new card and CTRL-V (paste). You can now right click and ungroup to edit the separate items (text, etc.). PM7: !!HAS A NEW GRAPHICS TYPE!!: *.PMO (PrintMaster Objects). This is used for several things, e.g. BorderPlus creates Border_Files with extension *.PMO (there are problems, I believe, with using border_plus borders on the front of a quarter fold, thin, side opening card... they don't seem to print correctly upside down). However, *.PMO files can be used for (about any) collection of PM objects (text boxes, etc.) on a panel. So... with your design on a card showing... CTRL-A (select all), right-click and GROUP now use FILE|EXPORT_AS. Choose *.PMO format. This will give an ART object (loadable from the art gallery) which you can use to put your design on another card (just load it like any other graphic and as the items are grouped, you can resize it without losing the relationships between objects). (the difference between the two methods is that the first, PM4, saves a project containing the design elements while the second, PM7, saves a new graphic type, containing the design elements (heck, it is a project's panel as a graphic) -- you could save the design in other graphics formats, check the resolution if you save as a bitmap, though -- however, you would then not be able to edit the text, reposition things, etc.) Don't delete your design with the back you want until you try out the use of the new graphic format *.PMO file (resolution; make sure you can edit the separate items after ungrouping; etc.) (seems to work, though) (NOTE that this does NOT save a copy of the pictures in the *.PMO file, it is like saving a project without the pictures, so you cannot share this with someone without sending the pictures along as well). PM4 users can get the same functionality by saving a project with their design (and copy/paste) instead of the new graphic format (load just like any graphic). Delors (jharris@oro.net) Subject: PJAY ~ print to edge 9/18/98 1:05:47 PM PST Welcome home, PJAY. Sorry to hear of the physical distress but I'll bet you actually feel lots better now than before the knife. Do take care of yourself. ~~ PRINT TO EDGE: I have tried something that works most of the time. I can select a custom page size on my HP1120c printer. So; I select a page size slightly bigger than the actually page I want to print. Then I "trick" the program by gently taping the page I want to print to a thin sheet of paper actually cut to the larger size. I use a few small pieces of double sided tape made somewhat tacky by rubbing it with my fingers before using so it doesn't stick too much, but just enough. It took a couple of tries but the results is just what I want -- a card printed to the edge. You have to make sure the project has been stretched to the size you want as well. Delors Ed Dotson (ed_dotson@hotmail.com) Subject: PM7 - Sandi/Eleanor 9/19/98 6:31:12 PM PST Sandi & Eleanor: Congrats on getting PM7 finally. I strongly recommend you do NOT install over your existing version. I've got some new BUG info to share. I needed to drop out a background (PM7 won't do that or transparent backgroungs either...), so did my regular thing in Adobe Photo Studio. Then, pulled it back into PM7 as I have in previous PMP.... looked fine on the screen; went ahead and did type, art, stuff, stuff.... save it; all appeared well... went to PRINT it and What the Hey?!... all of the stuff I did in Adobe was missing from the printed version. Shut down PM7; reopened; everything looked good; printed again; same problem. Well, shut down PM7, opened previous PMP and imported the saved new project. Looked fine on the screen; printed it; NOW the Adobe stuff was there. (But that's a lot of steps, and it's very deceptive that it looks ok on screen. ANOTHER THING: Something new in PM7, you get handles on some things you bring in as an Object; in this same project, I had two .JPG pictures; ADDed them as an OBJECT; saw the handles and thought "This is neat." So, I rotated one one way, and the other the opposite way; looked neat on the screen; THEY printed rotated in PM7; but, remember, the stuff from Adobe didn't print at all. In the version I printed from my original PMP, the pictures I'd rotated were back straight, had no handles, and were BLURRY. I had to go back in PM7, UNrotate them, and then go back to PMP to get the finished product. WELL, it looks like we'll be able to come up with SOME workarounds for the in PM7, but it's going to take a lot of extra steps. ANOTHER THING: I don't always have my internet connection hooked up when I want to do a printmaster project. In PMP, no problem. With PM7, when I load it without internet connection, it starts to run the phone dialer and stuff first... I have to click on CANCEL, and wait for that stuff to get me back to the PM7 opening screen. ANOTHER THING: You know, in PMP how you can select the TYPE of art you want to search for, i.e. PHOTO, etc.... well, you can't do that in PM7.... there's just maybe half of the SELECTION options for a SEARCH there is with PMP. .... to be continued.... Judy (judy2eagles@earthlink.net) Subject: To John 9/20/98 10:54:27 AM PST This is what they said: Thank you for your inquiry to PrintMaster Technical Support. Use the following steps to back up your projects. Your saved project files are stored in pmw\user001 ( or 000 )\projects. Backup all the files except the ones with a file name of userproj. These are temporary files and will conflict with a new installation. Your saved address book files are stored in pmw\books. Use Windows Explorer or File Manager to copy these files to a floppy diskette or temporary folder for safekeeping, or to replace after reinstalling PrintMaster. In File Manager, you must select a file, then choose Copy from the File menu. You will then be prompted for a location to place the copies (for example, A:\ is the location of your floppy drive). In Windows Explorer, you must select a file, then choose Copy from the Edit menu. You then click on the folder or drive in which you would like the copies placed. Then choose Paste from the Edit menu. Once you have confirmed that your files are properly backed up, completely uninstall Printmaster Gold and reinstall it. Copy the project files back into pmw\user001 ( or 000 )\projects and the address book files into pmw\books. Copy the files before starting the program, it will automatically import your saved work back into the program. Author: violet femme IP Address: 207.115.62.86 Subject: re: Moving PM 4 projects to PM 7 Date: 9/18/98 11:54:17 PM PST Message: Maurice here's a faster way to get your projects to appear in " your projects" PM7 after you have moved them in Explorer from PM4 ( or for that matter from PM3.: keep Explorer open, go to PM7- user.oo1: DELETE the 10 user files. close exlorer. Start ( i.e click on to run) pm7.It will say"there are projects etc ". and will AUTOMATICALLY install them .voila! Ed Dotson (ed_dotson@hotmail.com) Subject: Thanks - Transparent BK -Spamless 9/21/98 7:19:54 PM PST Following is a step-by-step walkthru of how I now make transparent backgrounds, Fun Pictures, etc. using Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2.0. Many, many thanks to Spamless for getting me on the right track via numerous emails today. 1. Select FILE 2. Select OPEN FILE 3. Open desired file (I did a .JPG digital photograph) {The next part converts it to a GIF 89a file} 4. Select FILE 5. Select SEND TO 6. Select GIF 89a EXPORT 7. Select ADVANCED (note the default transparency index color is grey) 8. Make PALATE=ADAPTIVE 9. Make COLORS=255 10. Un-check INTERLACED (to bring into PM7) 11. Select OK 12. Give the file a name 13. Select OK 14. Write down or remember the file name (should end in .GIF) {In the next part, you'll drop out the background, or face, or whatever you want to be transparent} 15. Enlarge work area to a good size on the work area (use + key) 16. Select ADVANCED 17. Select TOOLS 18. Select SELECT 19. Select SELECTION TOOL Select the tool-of-your-choice (rectangle, polygon, magic wand, etc.) You can select large area, with for example, the rectangle; the selected area is outlined with moving dash lines. If you want the entire selected area to be transparent, just hit the DELETE key; that area turns white. If you want to dropout parts of an area, use the RECTANGLE tool to select a large area that contains the area you want to drop out. Use the ERASER; it will only work within a selected area; all else is protected; you have many choices for shape and size of eraser. Erased areas also turn white. When you have all the areas white that you want to drop out (note: just the white areas you have made white will drop out; other white areas will remain opaque), repeat steps 4 thru 14. Now, just go into PM7, select ADD; select PICTURE; select FILE; select IMPORT; and import the .GIF file you just made. This brings a thumbnail in with all the other existing thumbnails, and you can double-click to select it and bring it in to your PM7 document (you'll note that the area that was white is now grey, i.e. transparent!!) Spamless (spamless@nil.nil) Subject: Transparency -- Adobe PhotoDeluxe 9/21/98 7:58:22 PM PST It is not necessary first to convert the graphic to GIF. I load, say a JPEG and, say, use the polygon tool to trace out a face I want to drop out and then hit DELete. I then choose FILE|Export and choose GIF89a. Then click on ADVANCED and PREVIEW. Here I click on each section I want transparent (you can choose more than one colour and all those palette entries will become transparent). Usually I uncheck the Interlaced option (heck, this is not for a web page... if it were, I probably would leave interlaced on) and that's it. It will be converted to GIF89a Spamless (spamless@Nil.nil) Subject: PhotoDeluxe: Transparent GIF 9/22/98 6:41:28 PM PST To Ed Dotson: not sure I follow the "multiple pallette/color" part ----- Suppose you make one face transparent then save the GIF. If you reload the GIF and cut out another part and save, it too will have the same background colour (and be transparent) but the first face may no longer be transparent. When loaded and you CUT out the second face, PHOTO DELUXE may insert a new entry in the palette for the background (same colour as the first -- so it looks the same-- , but a different palette entry). When exporting to GIF89a, use the ADVANCED and PREVIEW section. Click on both sections which you cut out and look below where it shows the palette. You may see two entries, both the same colour, become highlighted (the original background and the new background). I too usually just cut things out, but found this out when I went back and cut out another item and the first was no longer transparent (and remember GIFs are 256 colour -- if you have a true colour JPEG and convert to GIF you lose some colour... someone suggested DPP format and that PM7 supports transparency there too) Koye (bklj@ivic.net) Subject: Rebates..Again 9/22/98 9:38:45 PM PST Hi... My demo friend from Costco gave me the PM 4.0 and sent for her rebate in August. I told her about the problems everyone seems to be having with the PM rebates. She gave me this number to post. Is this the one everyone has been calling? 1-800-272-4274 Hope this will help. I've usually found that it is much cheaper to buy at Best Buy, CompUSA , or Staples. The only thing I've ordered directly from a company is the indispensable ClipMate. I think it's one of the best!! Bye... Koye EIINNRRSSTTTU Author: Linda IP Address: 208.22.31.142 Subject: re: block shadow behind letter Date: 9/21/98 8:13:57 AM PST Message: Lori, I had the same problem on a computer at work. I tried everything. Finally, a computer tech told me to change the default printer setting to a generic printer (this will be found in you printer book). I tried it, and it works great. The graphics print clearer and sharper and I have no more blocks behind any fonts. I do not have to adjust anything else. I print at 360 dpi. That is the capacity for the printer (it is an older Epson color jet pinter.) This may help your situation also.